


Play by Play

by Wonderland_Awaits



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Angst, Brian/Justin - Freeform, Britin - Freeform, Cunning!Brian, Discussions of infidelity, Jealousy, M/M, POV: Brian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:37:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wonderland_Awaits/pseuds/Wonderland_Awaits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Telling him that you love him isn’t going to change a goddamn thing… Slowly but surely, he’s being pulled back into your world, like gravity’s got a hold on him and it’s dragging him directly into your arms. But it isn’t gravity. It’s sheer force of will. He’ll come back to you because he wants it and you want it and you’re willing to fight for it even when he isn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play by Play

Telling him that you love him isn’t going to change a goddamn thing. He won’t change his mind and you know that better than anyone. He isn’t fickle and even if he did decide he’d made a mistake, he wouldn’t show it. No, he has to stick it out and make the most of what he’s got. The stubborn shit. He needs to come home and it’s about time he realized that fact.

This aching in your chest hasn’t gone away since the last time you saw him and you know why. It’s because you love him. You’ve known for so long that you assumed he knew too. Obviously, you were sorely mistaken. You saw it in his eyes the night he walked out. ‘I’m tired of living by your rules.’ And fuck that because you’ve been living by his rules for the longest time. The rules he set for both of you. The rules only he broke. 

‘You don’t kiss anyone on the mouth but me,’ he’d said and you agreed. You haven’t kissed anyone but him since that night. But the same isn’t true for him. Frat-party trick had been the first person he’d broken the rule with. You weren’t angry—not really. Were you annoyed that he got to break the rules? Yeah, probably. Were you hurt that he couldn’t, or more likely wouldn’t, stick to them when he knew that you were? Sure. But you let it go. You know it’s more mercy than he would have shown. But it wasn’t the last time he’d break his promise, his rule.

‘You can fuck whoever you want, as long as it’s not twice. Same for me,’ he’d said. It was the first of his rules for a reason. If you hadn’t agreed to this, you wouldn’t have agreed to any of the ones that followed. ‘Okay, Sunshine.’ you’d thought, ‘that works for me.’ He was never one to fuck the same trick twice anyway, save for a handful of more-than-talented men. But you were willing to let them go in order to keep him. No surprise there. After all, you wanted the kid to live with you. That was the whole point of the rules—to keep him around. It seemed like it was all going so nicely until his birthday. His stupid fucking birthday. You wonder why he had to be such a princess about it. It’s not as if you even celebrated your own birthday, or Mikey’s, or Linds’ or anyone else’s day of birth. So why did he think you’d trip all over yourself to do something for him? You’d planned on taking him out to that Italian place that he likes the next day as a sort of I’m-intentionally-ignoring-your-birthday-but-happy-birthday kind of thing. But no, he’d been a fucking princess about it and everyone had bitched and moaned that you should do something for the kid. So you did.

It wasn’t a nice or thoughtful gift and you knew it. The hustler was really more of a joke than anything else. When will the people that you refer to as your family figure you out? Probably never, thanks to your pushing them away constantly but that’s not the point. Justin had been hurt rather than amused and the rest of the family vilified you. Fucking fantastic, right? But the others being mad at you didn’t matter. What did matter was that your…Sunshine was slipping away and you didn’t even realize it until it was too late. His new object of affection was everything that you wouldn’t be. And shouldn’t have to be for him to know how you feel about him. He’s so stupid sometimes. 1500 on his SATs and no common sense. 

Music and candles and fucking picnics on the floor. That’s all it took to pull him into another man’s arms. More than once. And that’s the real problem here. You knew he’s always had a certain disregard for the rules but you thought he might stick to the ones he’d made. 

‘No names or numbers exchanged,’ he’d said. Okay fine. What the fuck did you care what the name of the guy you were plowing was? Did knowing his name make his ass any less tight? No? Then you couldn’t have given a shit. As for numbers, you’d almost laughed at him. Sure, guys gave you their numbers all the time but you either threw them away before the trick had his back turned or kept them all until later in the night and disposed of them all at once. As you’ve repeatedly reminded people, you don’t tend to fuck the same person more than once to begin with. You didn’t need the numbers. But apparently this was another rule he was unwilling to follow.

In his defense, he didn’t really get the choice to not know this guy’s name. Aside from that fact, though, this was completely of his own doing. He knew what would happen if he kept going back to the oh-so-talented musician. You know that he played dumb and coy with his new lover in the beginning because you know him. He loves you and didn’t want to act on his new attraction to another man. He knew he wanted more than a fuck out of the guy so he thought about staying away. Until his birthday that is. You can’t help but feel like you’ve been cheated on, which is completely impossible seeing as you were never his boyfriend to begin with. But he’d hidden this person from you. The betrayal went so much deeper than the fact that he’d been fucking the guy. You didn’t care that he’d fucked him. You almost didn’t care that he’d fucked him twice and broken yet another rule. But there was something else that bothered you more than you would ever have thought possible. 

It wasn’t the sex that bothered you. You knew that because fucking was just that—it was sex and it could be (and usually was) meaningless. No, the fucking you could forgive. It was the emotional connection that he’d formed with his new lover. He talked of lofty goals and pretentious artsy ideals and his wants in life and even of how you would never give him these things. He’d told his new lover about you and your life and your experiences. Stories were told of different moments in your (non)relationship with the young artist and his new soon-to-be lover sat and absorbed it all. The bastard must have been building a case against you before he even knew your name. Smart move, because it would take more than a sweet word or a gentle touch to get the blond away from you. Your lover was completely oblivious to or chose not to see what was happening. He let someone else into your business, your (non)relationship, and your life.

Even with all of that, you forgave him. You let him come home to you every evening and for some time, pretended that you didn’t notice his frequent showers as soon as he got in the door or his avoidance of certain topics or the violin music almost constantly streaming from the speakers of your top of the line stereo system. You forgave and turned a blind eye and forgave some more before you finally broke. Everyone as their boiling point. In your case, it was a freezing temperature. Anyone who knew you both could tell that the two of you were, in so many ways opposites. His anger scorched and singed anything and anyone it touched. Yours was biting and frigid and cold as ice. He felt that ice the night he came home smelling of another man (the same man he’d smelled of two days before as he walked in front of you to get to the bathroom) and you couldn’t take it anymore. You stopped him before he got to the shower and proceeded to kiss and tease and dominate him, leaving him begging for you. You showed your anger with two simple sentences. ‘Go take a shower. You stink.’ He knew it was over then; the pretense, the lying, the game…all of it. But not ‘you’. That he didn’t know, because you didn’t know. 

‘No matter where you are, no matter what you’re doing, you always come home.’ he’d said. You’d haggled over the time at which your happy asses both had to be back in the loft but you agreed. You would always come home because that’s what he wanted and, if you were honest with yourself, that’s what you wanted too even though you never would have done it on your own. You would have stayed out all night occasionally just to prove to him that you could. The night he broke this rule, you didn’t see it coming. You had told him that it was up to him where he wanted to be. You didn’t say it to guilt him into staying or in an effort to force him out of your life. It was just a simple fact. The point of the rules was to set a basis for what your lives would be together but as you had so blatantly pointed out time and time again, you’re queer. You you’re with someone it’s because you want to be. By saying it was up to him where he wanted to be, you were reminding him that there were no locks on your doors and that if he wasn’t satisfied with the life he had with you, he was free to seek happiness elsewhere without further ramification. You didn’t actually expect him to stay with you and a part of you didn’t want him to either. It was probably a good thing for him to be with someone his own age, you’d convinced yourself. How you felt and your happiness came second to his feelings and happiness and had for a while, though you never let him hear you say as much. And that’s really where his problem was hidden—you never said it.

Like so many other things in your (non)relationship, the ending was not spoken. It went unspoken like the ‘I love you’ that you though at him on the night of his prom. It went unheard like the ‘I need you’ that escaped your lips as you held him, bleeding, on the cement. It went unvoiced like the ‘I don’t know what I would do without you’ that almost made its way passed your teeth the night that you were gentle, like the first time. It went without being spoken like the ‘Don’t ever leave me’ that found itself on the tip of your tongue the night you confronted him about his secret lover. No, this was just another in a series of unspoken messages between the two of you.

His eyes said it all. ‘I can’t do this anymore’,‘I’m sorry’,’I still love you.’ All of those things along with a litany of others were screamed at you across the crowded dance floor of Babylon that night. The party was for him but he didn’t stay long. No, he was gone before you knew what hit you. He was gone before he’d ever stepped into the club that night. Once you realized it, though, you knew that you couldn’t fall apart. Not in front of him as he looked at you with those blue eyes that you’d loved since the first night you saw them. Not later around your friends and family who asked why the fuck you let him go. Not even alone in your own home (that you’d once shared with him). No, that wasn’t your style and there wasn’t cause for it. He thought that he could be happier somewhere else and you weren’t the person to tell him otherwise. So you’d let him leave without truly reacting. You pulled on your mask and that was that. Your walls went back up and he understood. So he walked out the doors to the club that you’d always considered your personal playground. 

He broke all the rules. He ran away with someone else because of promises of romance and candles and picnics on the floor. He was never really gone though. That’s what made it clear what had to be done. What’s being done. Slowly but surely, he’s being pulled back into your world, like gravity’s got a hold on him and it’s dragging him directly into your arms. But it isn’t gravity. It’s sheer force of will. He’ll come back to you because he wants it and you want it and you’re willing to fight for it even when he isn’t.

You’ll have him back. This will all be nothing but a distant, unpleasant memory. Some might say you’re not fighting fair but you’d just laugh at them.

You always followed the rules.

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted from my tumblr...if you like this, there's more things that I've written there that you might like...
> 
> italktoyouastoafriend.tumblr.com
> 
> Be kind in your feedback, if you would :)


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